IoT (Internet of Things) is all about connecting to the internet. And even more it is about security. Without security and without encrypted communication, everyone possibly can see what I send or receive. And this is especially bad if passwords or user names are sent in an unencrypted way. So encryption and secure communication is key. The solution to that is to use a connection which uses the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol.

I want to use TLS for my MQTT communication (see “MQTT with lwip and NXP FRDM-K64F Board“). I’m still learning MQTT, and I’m even more learning about the fundamentals of security and security protocols. So this article is about what I have learned recently, and what I can use to make my data communication secure: Network stack architecture, symmetric and asymmetric encryption and certificates.

In the area of IoT (Internet of Things), one obvious need is to have a way to send and receive data with an internet protocol. MQTT (or Message Queue Telemetry Transport) is exactly like that: a light-weight Machine-to-Machine communication protocol. With the MQTT protocol a microcontroller (or ‘client’) can send data and/or subscribe to data. For example to the Adafruit.IO: